About Us

Crow’s Theatre has been a leading force in the Canadian theatre landscape, recognized for provocative and award-winning new theatre work. Founded in 1983 by Jim Millan, it first established itself by winning the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Innovation and Artistic Excellence for Dali, the company’s very first original production. In 1989, Brad Fraser’s Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was an unqualified hit. Crow’s Theatre spent the next decade establishing a reputation in Canada and abroad with tours and remounts of some of the most successful productions.

Since its inception, Crow’s Theatre has been a responsive and evolving expression of the creative aspirations of its Artistic Director. Since 2007, Artistic Director Chris Abraham has continued in this spirit with an increased focus on the development of emerging and mid-career Canadian playwrights through commissions, residencies, and extended play development.

Crow’s has continued to build on its body of new work, with notable world-premieres of Eternal Hydra, Instructions to Any Socialist Government Wishing to Abolish Christmas, SEEDS, Someone Else, Winners and Losers, and The Watershed. Alongside these premieres, Crow’s has continued to tour nationally and partner with artists and institutions across the country in the development of new work. Crow’s productions are regularly invited to play at Canadian theatre festivals, including Magnetic North, FTA, and PuSH.

ARTISTIC VISION

To ignite passionate and enduring engagement between our audiences and artists by creating, producing, and promoting unforgettable theatre that examines and illuminates the pivotal narratives of our times.

ARTISTIC MANDATE

We are a content-led company. We seed projects and collaborations with artists and companies that are engaged in the examination of our culture’s pivotal narratives in ways that are direct yet complex, entertaining, and challenging; a process that happily and constantly leads us to reconsider, re-imagine, and redefine the possibilities of the theatre and the world that we make.

Crow’s commits to a long-term development process. We provide an appropriate gestation period, with multiple moments of audience engagement, so that each work grows and is informed through its resonance with the public. We encourage development to occur beyond the premiere production through remounts and tours.

Crow’s values quality over quantity, only programming and planning events that can be delivered with rigour, precision, intelligence, and beauty. We only create work with strong potential to live beyond its premiere production. We extend the life of work that we create through co-production, touring, remounts, or promoting and brokering new productions by other companies. We actively seek out expertise outside of the theatre milieu in order to identify or understand stories that are of vital and pressing concern for our audience and artists.